Building an E-Commerce Presence for Music Stores: 8-Step Guide

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Does your music store sell online?

If not, there may be more money to make than you think. Engaging in e-commerce expands the number of customers you can reach — rather than selling only to customers in your city or region, you can sell to customers across the nation (or even the world). And by selling to more customers, you can significantly increase revenue.

To stay competitive in the musical instrument market, you need to keep up with buyer preferences. Many customers prefer to shop online because it’s easy and convenient, and opening an online store allows you to serve these customers. And as more and more music stores start selling online, you need to set up e-commerce to effectively compete.

But as a small business owner, you already have a full list of tasks — and adding e-commerce can seem overwhelming. In this blog, we offer a step-by-step guide to creating an e-commerce presence for music stores. By following these steps, you can find the best suppliers, set up a great website, and start selling to more customers.

Step 1: Conduct Market Research

To effectively offer e-commerce, you have to understand your audience. Research your target audience and which musical instruments and accessories they’re most likely to order online. This should influence which products you offer online and how your website is organized.

Remember to research your competitors, too. Look at other online music stores to see what they offer and how they organize their sites. Identify the strategies you want to emulate and pitfalls you want to avoid. If you notice common trends, think of what you can do to make your store stand out.

Try researching music sales channels online to see if you can use an external site to sell instruments. You may find success selling instruments on general e-commerce sites like eBay, or music-specific sites like Reverb. As you gain a greater understanding of how the music industry works, you’ll determine which products you want to sell and which digital platform you’ll use to sell them.

Step 2: Find the Right Suppliers

To provide great musical instruments to your customers, you need the best suppliers. While you likely have suppliers you work with for your brick-and-mortar store, you may need to bring on additional suppliers that can help you ship musical instruments to customers in different regions. To ensure you choose the right suppliers, do your research beforehand — look for reviews from other businesses that work with them.

Before you strike a deal with a supplier, answer these questions:

Do they offer high-quality products?
Can they meet deadlines?
Do they keep their word?
Are their products reasonably priced compared to competitors?

You may choose to work with multiple suppliers to gain access to more instruments and serve more customers. Remember: Diversifying your supplier base can reduce risk — if one supplier encounters issues and can’t fill an order for new inventory, you can still order inventory from other suppliers.

Step 3: Build a Great Website

If you decide to sell online, you either need to use external platforms, build your own website, or both. Your website should be well-designed, clearly associated with your brand, and easy to navigate. It should also showcase the musical instruments you offer in their best light.

To maximize sales, make sure the selection and checkout processes are simple and clear. Use high-quality photos of each item so it’s clear what the user is purchasing, and try to process a transaction in as few clicks as possible to reduce abandoned carts.

Either hire a professional to design a website for you, or, if you have the training, design one yourself. Make sure to test your website on desktop, tablets, and smartphones to make sure customers have a good experience on different devices. Some point of sale (POS) systems offer website builder tools with design support to help you get your site off the ground.

Step 4: Market Your Online Music Store

Once you’ve set up your online music store, you need to get the word out. Start with search engine optimization (SEO). This is the process of using highly-searched keywords and phrases in your site that cause it to appear higher on search engines like Google.

Do your research about the most searched keywords related to music stores, and try to incorporate these words and phrases naturally on your website. Depending on the type of store you run, you might use phrases like “music store near me,” “online guitar shop,” or “music supply.”

You can also use social media to promote your online store. Create accounts for your business on popular sites like Facebook and Instagram if you don’t already have them. You can use these sites to advertise specific products and showcase your music store. You can also use these platforms to advertise sales and discounts. If you're having a sale on used guitars, you can advertise it on social media and post information about each used guitar you have in stock.

If you want to expand the reach of your marketing, run paid ads on Instagram, YouTube, or Google. These platforms allow you to identify your target audience, so you can show ads to users who are most likely to be interested in musical instruments.

Step 5: Offer Great Customer Service

Providing great customer support gives your online store a positive reputation. It’s best practice to offer multiple channels of communication for customer service issues. Try offering email, text, and phone for customer service concerns, and respond to each one as quickly as possible.

Customers call in with a variety of issues, whether it’s shipping and delivery issues, product defects, or mistakes with orders. Because not all of these variables are in your control, there are limits to what you can do for your customers — but you should always listen and do your best to resolve any issues. Going the extra mile to help resolve a customer’s problem can turn them into a loyal customer that returns to buy their next instrument.

Step 6: Leverage Data Analytics

Make sure the platform you use to run your online music store gives you full access to your data. You need to be able to see which products are selling well and which ones aren’t, and check key metrics like cost, revenue, and profit. You can use this data to make better decisions for your business.

If you start selling a lot of violins, for example, you can market them more heavily to accelerate sales. Prominently display them on your website, create social media content about the violins, and use SEO terms to make them more searchable. If sales start to dip for saxophones, you can stop offering them or try to promote them to increase awareness. In time, data will reveal which products you should focus on and which to move on from.

Step 8: Optimize Music Inventory Management

Inventory management is key to an optimal music store e-commerce system. You need to be able to check how much inventory you have to prevent overstock and stockouts. Find a digital system that allows you to keep track of these totals and connect to the internet, so the totals update automatically. Luckily, modern POS systems offer these capabilities.

With a POS system, you can monitor inventory and sales totals for both your in-store and online businesses, and see totals for your entire business. This helps you find your best product mix and purchase the right amount of inventory.

Build the Best E-Commerce Presence for Music Stores With Music Shop 360

Adding e-commerce to your music store’s business model opens the door to more customers and greater revenue — but first, you need a plan. You need to understand your audience, create a well-designed and functional website, and offer the right products.

You also need to market your online store and pay attention to your sales numbers. Over time, your metrics help you determine which e-commerce strategies are working for your business (and which ones aren’t), so you can optimize your e-commerce operations.

Creating an e-commerce presence for music stores is simple and effective with the help of a POS system, especially one created specifically for music stores. Music Shop 360 is a cloud-based POS system designed to help you sell musical instruments both in store and online. With our website builder feature, you can customize your website to your needs with the help of our experienced designers. Users have everything they need to set up their online presence and start making sales.

To see what Music Shop 360 can do for your business, schedule a demo today!